Touch is a team-based game that requires six players. It involves short distanced sprints being played over the course of 45 minutes. Athletes who participate in touch require all the fitness components to perform to a high standard. Fitness components can be defined as being in good health resulting from proper physical exercise and nutritional aspects. This analytical report focuses on an athlete’s suitability to touch, with the involvement of their fitness testing to compare and contrast to the national average.
The primary components of fitness for a touch player include anaerobic endurance, speed, coordination and agility. Anaerobic endurance can be defined as the ability of the muscles to sustain an activity and not fatigue. This is crucial for constantly using the muscles to sprint forward and back within attack and defence. The component of speed, the ability to produce energy fast without oxygen, can be utilised to sprint away from defenders without getting tagged.
Coordination is the ability to use different parts of the body together smoothly and efficiently. This is used throughout the game when making a touch during defence and getting back on side. Furthermore, agility can be defined as another primary fitness component within touch. Attacking players can shoot up to touch a player, when taking a touch and when dumping and splitting. Agility is the ability to change direction with a great amount of speed. Overall, fitness components play a significant role within the sport of touch.
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Fitness testing can be utilised to test the suitability of a person to touch. It involves a variety of exercises that test an athlete’s ability and their overall physical health. From a general health evaluation, to a specified strength and endurance testing. The specified fitness test that the athlete participated in focuses on speed, aerodynamic endurance, flexibility, muscle endurance, balance, coordination and agility. These components were tested by the participant completing a 40m sprint, the beep test, a sit and reach exercise, wall sits, push ups, a cone test, an alternate ball toss and an agility run. To conclude, it can be identified that the results can be analysed to enhance the athlete’s performance.
After a thorough analysation of the fitness test results, it can be established that the athlete has an abundant amount of strengths and weaknesses. Action needs to be taken to improve the weaknesses of the participant in the performance of touch football. The most significant weaknesses that were identified were flexibility and power. The athlete displayed decreased mobility, stiffness and soreness in muscles the day after playing providing strong evidence that flexibility is the participant’s fundamental weakness.
Being inflexible not only affects the risk of injury but can be the cause of decreased speed, because of the resistance tissue in the muscles that surround the joints. Additionally, during a game the player would not be able to turn their back in numerous ways for passes, increasing the chances of throwing a forward pass. Specific training methods, training principles and the physiology of exercise can contribute to the solution to improve the athlete’s flexibility. For the fitness component of flexibility, a training program can be created to enhance the athlete’s ability and overall performance in touch.
